"Bold words," said the Villicus; "we'll give you a chance to prove them."

Another filly was roped, bitted, bridled, and saddled, and her captors invited me to mount.

"Pooh!" said I. "Let some one else ride her. I don't need all those preliminaries. I can walk right out into that bunch of colts, catch any young stallion you point out, hold him by the nose, gentle him without any rope or thong on him, mount him by vaulting onto his back, and ride him about unbitted, unbridled, bareback, and as I please, without his rearing or backing or kicking."

"Son," said the Villicus, "you are either a lunatic or a demigod. Go in and try what you boast you can do. Show us."

"Point out your stallion," I suggested.

He indicated a beautiful bay with a white face. He let me approach him at my first attempt, let me take him by the nose, let me lead him close to my dumbfounded audience, let me mount him. I rode him about, turning him to right or left as the Villicus ordered, at my suggestion. When I got off I lifted each of his hoofs in succession, crawled under his belly, crawled between his fore-legs, and then between his hind-legs, while the onlookers held their breath; finally I stood behind him, slapped his rump and pulled his tail.

"Is he broken?" I queried.

"Apparently he is gentle as a lamb to you," the Villicus admitted, "but how about the rest of us?"

"Bring in a saddle and bridle," I suggested, "and I'll bit him and hold him while two of you saddle him and until one of you mounts him. He should be no more dangerous than a roped filly."

They did as I suggested and I then rode him about until he appeared used to the saddle and bit and already, at once, bridle-wise. Then one of the wranglers rode him.

I gentled colt after colt all that day till sunset, with a very brief pause for food and rest. Also I kept it up next day until mid-afternoon, when the last colt had been tamed.

Then, as we stood breathing, one of the horse-wranglers suggested:

"Try him on Selinus."

"That would be plain murder," one of the others cried.

"I am not so sure," the Villicus ruminated. "I am almost ready to feel that he might even tame Selinus."

Off we trooped to the stable of the choice breeding-stallions. There, in a darkened box-stall, I was shown a beautiful demon of a horse, four years old, a sorrel, with a white face and white forefeet. He certainly looked wicked enough.

"Will you try him?" the Villicus asked me.

"Of course," I said. "Let him out into the yard or the paddock."

Into the paddock he was let out, by means of a door in his stall worked by winches from above. In the afternoon sunlight he pranced and curvetted about, a joy to see.

"Let me show Felix what he is like," one of the younger horse-wranglers suggested.

"You can," the Villicus agreed. "We all know how agile you are and how quick at vaulting a fence."

The fellow vaulted into the paddock when Selinus was at its further corner. The moment the beast saw him he charged at full-run, screaming like an angry gander, the picture of a man-killer, ears laid back, nostrils wide and red, mouth open, teeth bared, forehoofs lashing out high in front, an equine fury. The lad vaulted the fence handily when Selinus was not three yards from him and the brute pawed angrily at the palings and bit them viciously.

"Want to try, Felix?" the Villicus asked me again.

Without a word I vaulted the enclosure within two yards of Selinus. He stood, ears cocked forward, nostrils quiet, mouth shut, all four hoofs on the ground, quivering all over.

Inch by inch I neared him till my hand touched him. He trembled like an aspen-leaf, but did not attack me.

"Hercules be good to us all!" exclaimed one of the men.

After that I did with Selinus all I had done with the first stallion-colt, gentling him, leading him by the nose, mounting him, riding him, crawling under his belly, between his fore-legs and hind-legs, pulling his tail, slapping him liberally all over. Then, timidly, urged by their comrades' jeers, the two wranglers whom I invited brought me a saddle and bridle and I bitted him and held him while they saddled. Then I rode him.

Afterwards, with much misgiving, but shamed into boldness, the chief horse-wrangler mounted him and rode him.

Selinus was tamed!

"Felix," said the Villicus, "you are too valuable to set to herding cattle. You are henceforward chief horse-wrangler of this estate. I'll give you a house all to yourself and a girl to keep house for you. When not horse taming here or wherever I lend you out, you can spend your time as you please."

The onlookers acclaimed his award and the displaced chief horse-wrangler shook hands with me and declared that he was proud to be second to such a wonder as "Felix the Wizard."

After that I lived a life of ease. My dwelling was a neat cottage well shaded with fine trees and bowered in climbing vines, with a tiny courtyard, a not too tiny atrium with a hearth, a kitchen, a store-room and two bed-rooms. It was as clean as possible and well furnished for a slave's quarters. The girl and I liked each other at first sight. I am not going to tell her name, but a jest we had between us led me to call her by the pet name of Septima. If she had been a free-woman, she would have been described as a young widow. Her former mate, one of the horse-wranglers, had been killed by Selinus the previous autumn. Their child, not a year old, had died before his father. Septima had recovered from her grief during the winter and had become normally cheerful before she was assigned to me. I found her constitutionally merry, very good company, always diligent, a surpassing cook, magical with the garden, especially with her beloved flowers, a capable needle-woman, always neat, and very good- looking. We got on famously together.

With her beehives only, Septima had trouble. She understood bees perfectly, but was afraid of them, and with reason, for she was manifestly obnoxious to bees and was far too often stung. Of course, bees, like all other living creatures, were mild to me. I tended her hives, under her supervision, for I knew nothing of bees; according to her directions I captured several swarms for her. Also I, when the time came, removed combs from such hives as she designated.

Spring was in its full glory and I felt the exhilaration of it. Each home- coming was a delight. And I was much away, for the Villicus had me convoyed about the countryside to every estate which possessed an unbroken colt or an intractable horse. I gentled successfully every one I encountered.

After all the bad horses and raw colts for miles around had been tamed I spent some days idling about my cottage and getting acquainted with it and with Septima. But within not many days I grew restive. I told the Villicus I wanted something to do.

"Well," he said, "five steers have eluded one of my herd-gangs and no one can find them. Question the men (he named them) so as to get the right start, and try your luck."

I was off, trailing those five steers, for three days and two nights. By sunset of the third day I had them back at the villa.

After that I was called on to hunt down and round up all stampeded cattle and all strays, whether cattle, horses, goats, sheep or swine. I enjoyed my lone outings and between them basked contentedly in the comfort of my cottage and the amenity of Septima's cheeriness. During my stays at home I thoroughly familiarized myself with the villa, its outbuildings and all their inhabitants. Also I put a good deal of time on Selinus, whom I transformed from an insane man-killer into one of the gentlest stallions I ever heard of. I taught him all the niceties of obedience acclaimed in perfect parade horses till he would stand, sidle, back, sidle diagonally, curvet and execute all the show-steps promptly at the signalling touch or sound. I tamed him till he would let anybody gentle him, till it was perfectly safe for anyone to ride him. I even trusted Septima on him and he justified my confidence in my training of him and in him. In fact, from being a man-killer who had to be kept penned up in the dark, whom not even the boldest horse-master dare approach, he became so gentle and so trustworthy that he could be let run at large, mild to all human beings, even to strangers.

He grew to love me like a pet dog, followed me about when I was not riding him, and would come to me from far away to a call or gesticulation; and he could see me and recognize me at such distances that I revised my notions as to the powers of sight possessed by horses, for I had held the common opinion that no horse can see clearly or definitely any object at all far from him. Selinus repeatedly saw and recognized me a full half-mile away and galloped to me, approaching with every demonstration of joy.

During my horse-wrangling expeditions and my excursions after wandering stock I had grown well acquainted with the country-side and its inhabitants. I was on terms of comradeship with all my fellow-slaves, of easy sociability with the yeomanry; while I was treated by the overseers, the Villicus, and inspectors with marked consideration. Thus I rapidly learnt all there was to know of the idiosyncrasies of the locality, since everybody seemed to trust me and no one held aloof or was reticent with me.

I found conditions in the Umbrian mountains as amazing, as incredible as in the ergastulum at Nuceria. There the two vital facts were the negligence and impotence of the warders and the secret system for cheating and thwarting them. Here all the thoughts of slaves, peasants and yeomen on the one hand, and of overseers, inspectors and landowners on the other, pivoted on the existence in the district of a post of road-constabulary on the lookout for bandits and of a camp of brigands owing allegiance to the King of the Highwaymen.

The wealthy proprietors, the gentlemanly landowners, the inspectors of the Estate, its Villicus and his overseers all suspected the presence of the bandits and were doing all they could to assist the road-constabulary to locate them, pounce on them and capture them. Their efforts were completely futile. Neither any of the constabulary nor any of the well-to- do persons who sided with them, could ever get an inkling of the location of the outlaws' various camps nor was any of them ever able to be really sure that bandits were actually within a few miles. For the whole body of yeomanry, peasants and slaves, even the slaves of those proprietors keenest on the scent of the brigands and most eager to nab them, were leagued to bamboozle, thwart and oppose their masters and betters, and to aid the outlaws, to keep them posted on everything said and proposed by the loyal inhabitants, and to assist them in outwitting the authorities, the constabulary and all persons who sided with them. In this they were notably successful.

It is my keen recollection of this condition of things which determines me to omit from this part of my narrative all names of persons and places. The generality of the population made a sort of religion out of their complicity with the outlaws. They took an almost religious pride in cooperating with them and in antagonizing their adversaries. They hated all the adversaries of the outlaws, whether landowners, constabulary or inspectors. But, above all, they loathed, abhorred, abominated and detested with a white-hot animosity any yeoman, peasant or slave who failed to do all in his power to foster the interests of the outlaws; regarding such persons, male or female, as traitors to the cause of the populace. Especially did they cherish an envenomed and malignant grudge against anyone who actually sided with the constabulary, gave them information or betrayed the outlaws: or even against anyone who helped or shielded any such informer.

As I was the means of spoiling the long-prepared and much-hoped for coup on which the robbers had set their highest hopes, as not a few men and women assisted me with information, aided me in other ways and protected me afterwards, I dare not name any names for fear that some survivor or some son or grandson of some participant in these doings might learn through me of long suspected but never verified treason to the unwritten law of the country-side and might bloodily avenge it on a surviving helper of mine or on any such helper's children or grandchildren. The Umbrian mountaineers are spleenful, tenacious of a grudge and ferociously acrimonious.

I learnt all these amazing facts without difficulty, for slaves, peasants and yeoman alike assumed that I was of their party and was heart and soul with the outlaws. I was not subject to suspicion because I visited the post of the constabulary, became acquainted with every man of them, their sergeants and their officers and frequented their company. All the yeomen, peasants and slaves whose abodes were near the post, were, on the surface, on the best of terms with the road-constables; pretended to help them with information, retailing to them as rumors all sorts of inventions calculated to throw them off the scent of the outlaws, always with an air of the friendliest good-will; and loitered, idling about the post, chatting of local gossip.

I was so entirely trusted that I was taken to the outlaws' camp and made acquainted with the entire band. Paradoxically the members of the band were all hulking burly ruffians of twenty-five to thirty-five years, whereas their chief, while big and brawny enough, was inferior in size to any of his subordinates and younger by six full years than the youngest of them. To him I was boisterously presented as a brother, for his name also was Felix. In fact, he was the man since famous as Felix Bulla, for long the most redoubtable outlaw in Italy. Then he was hardly more than a lad, for all his bulk and strength and ferocity. He had been appointed chief of the band by the King of the Highwaymen in person, who held him in the warmest regard for his ruthlessness, courage, skill, and cunning, especially for his cunning, rating him, as I was told by all the band, and having proclaimed him to them, as the most subtle and crafty outlaw alive after himself.

Bulla, like everybody else, appeared to take to me and treated me as an equal, after conversing with me for hours at a time. I was always a welcome guest at any of the bandits' camps and they often made me show off my admired powers on fox-cubs, badgers, weasels and other such wild creatures which they or their peasant friends had trapped alive. My ability to tame, handle, fondle and make tractable to anyone such animals appeared a source of unflagging interest and unceasing entertainment to these ruffians.

As I was allowed to dispose of my time as I chose, whenever I was not busy rounding up strayed stock or taming raw colts, I had plenty of leisure to ride about the country-side, make friends, get intimate with the constabulary and the outlaws and idle many of my days as appeared most pleasant. I took full advantage of my partial liberty.

The weather, from my arrival at the Imperial estate, was mostly fine and often glorious. Spring came early and merged beautifully into summer. I enjoyed myself hugely. Besides local peculiarities and the humors of the tacit league to thwart the constabulary and foster the interests of the outlaws, I derived much entertainment from the traffic on the Flaminian Highway. Of course, there were Imperial couriers, travellers of all sorts, and convoys of every kind of goods, long strings of wagons, carts or pack- mules laden with wheat, other grains, wine, oil, flax, charcoal, firewood, ingots of bronze, lead or iron, and countless other commodities on their way to Rome; or convoys of clothing, hangings, furniture, utensils and the like, going northwards from the City.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE OUTLAWS

From early spring, however, all this normal traffic was interfered with, delayed, hindered and even totally blockaded by column after column of wains and wagons passing southwards, huge wagons, drawn by six or eight or even ten horses or mules or by as many big long-horned white oxen, every wagon laden with a cage or two or more cages containing beasts being conveyed to the Colosseum in Rome. This amazing procession roused my interest as soon as it began to pass; filling, clogging, blocking the highway and continuing without intermission day after day, ceasing its movement, indeed, each night, but making the roadside almost a continuous camp of teamsters and caretakers, barely half of them sleeping, the moiety busy about their draft-cattle or the cages of their charges.

The endless stream of caravans amazed me. I had seen beast-fights without number in the Colosseum, but had never thought of the enormous labor and expense incident on the preparations for even one morning's exhibition of, say, a hundred lions and other beasts in proportion. Now I meditated over the thousands of trappers and other hunters who must scour the forests of Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhaetia and Germany to gather such a supply of beasts for exhibition. I saw wolves, bears and boars by the thousand, and hundreds of lynxes, elk and wild bulls, both the strange forest-bisons, unlike our cattle, with low rumps and high shoulders and their horns turned downwards and forwards, parallel to each other, and the huger and even fiercer bulls, much like farm bulls, but larger, taller and leaner and with horns incredibly long, so that their tips were often two yards and more apart. I had no idea of the vast numbers of such beasts which were yearly poured into Rome from all the mountains and forests to the north and east of the Alps. I was amazed.

Even more was I amazed to see hundreds upon hundreds of cages containing beasts not from northern Europe, but from Africa, or even from Asia: lions without number, panthers and leopards by the hundred, many tigers, antelopes of all kinds by scores of each kind, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami in enormous cages on gigantic wains drawn by twelve yoke of oxen; even a dozen huge gray elephants pacing sedately, their turbaned mahouts rocking on their necks.

I knew that the traffic in beasts from the northern forests concentrated at Aquileia and I had a hazy notion that they were customarily shipped from there by sea round Italy and through the straits to the Tiber. My curiosity was excited as to why they were now coming overland instead of going by sea. Still more was I curious as to why these hordes of animals from the south should be traversing Italy from the north.

I asked questions and could get no satisfaction from the natives of the district: slaves, peasants, yeomen, proprietors, overseers, Villicus and all, they one and all knew nothing. If they claimed to know, what they alleged merely emphasized their ignorance.

The constabulary knew, but were inclined to be reticent and, when they spoke, were laconic. Yet their briefest utterances contained hints which confirmed the only fact I had elicited from the natives: namely, that this traffic was not only unusual along the Flaminian Highway, but had never been seen on it before; was a complete novelty, even a portent. They also confirmed my impression that few animals destined for beast-fights in the amphitheatres reached Rome overland; as I had thought, practically all had hitherto come by sea and up the Tiber.

Still curious, I made friends with the teamsters. Some were from Ravenna, and even these grumbled at the two hundred and fifty miles as ruinous to their cattle. The animals they convoyed had come overland from Aquileia to Altinum and from there to Ravenna by sea. In this way had come the crocodiles, hippopotami and rhinoceroses.

More teamsters were from Aquileia itself. Some of these with the lighter wagons for the cages containing wolves, lynxes, small antelopes, hyenas or African apes, had been able to take the shorter though poorer road by way of Patavium and Ateste to Bononia, which made their total journey under five hundred and twenty miles. But most, including all those conveying bears, boars, panthers, leopards, lions or tigers, had come by the more northerly road through Verona. Those with panthers, leopards or small stags had come from Verona, by way of Hostilia to Bononia and from there southward as did all, making their journey about five hundred and fifty miles; the men conveying cages of tigers, lions, bears, boars, elk, or wild bulls had mostly come from Verona through Cremona; from there some through Regio to Bononia, others through Placentia; and for these their total teaming did not differ much, about six hundred and twenty miles for the ones and ten miles more for the others. Teams tugging wains carrying the heaviest cages containing unusually large elk, boars, bears or bulls, had had to go by way of Milan and had been put to it to keep their teams fit for a journey of over seven hundred miles.

Besides the difference in weight of the loads, chiefly depending on the needed strength of the cages, I found that their divergence of routes was due, in part, to the efforts which the procurator of all this teaming had made to avoid choking the roads. The teamsters averred that they knew nothing as to why the beasts were being brought this way; and no more as to why animals brought all the way from Africa to Aquileia, a voyage far longer than the voyage to Rome, should then be conveyed overland from, Aquileia to the Colosseum.

I enjoyed idling about the teamsters' camps chatting with them and the attendants who cared for the beasts. One hot evening, just about sunset, when I was already thinking of riding off home to bathe and dine, while I was lingering to watch his keepers urging their little gang of slaves to pour more and more water over a gasping hippopotamus, there was a yell of alarm all along the line and a scampering, scattering rush of fleeing men; teamsters, attendants and keepers. A panther had broken out of its cage, when a wagon overset.

He came down the middle of the highway, keeping to it, as everyone ran off it to right and left. I had strolled some distance from where I had tethered my horse. Naturally, as I could not mount and dash off, I did not run. I stepped into the middle of the road and faced the beast. Of course, he stopped, stood still and stared at me. I walked towards him, very deliberately, even pausing between paces, till I was an arm's length from him. He cringed and cowered. I took him by the scruff of his neck, turned him round, led him back to his cage, which was not broken, only jarred open, made him enter it, and closed the door on him.

Thereupon the fugitives flocked back, acclaiming me as a sorcerer. The superintendent of that caravan insisted on my giving him my name. I told him I was Felix, the horse-wrangler of the Imperial estate. He gave me a broad gold piece.

Unable to elicit anything from the natives or the teamsters I resorted to the outlaws. I had been admonished before I saw any of them that it was not according to the etiquette of the district for anyone to ride a horse into the outlaws' camp. If anywhere near it one visited it on foot. If too far one carefully avoided appearing to ride towards it or from it. When the camp, for instance, happened to be south of my cottage I would ride off north, east, or west, fetch a long compass about, tether my horse at least half a mile from the camp, generally farther away, and stroll towards it. On leaving I invariably departed by a path different from that by which I had come. When I reached my horse I was careful similarly to choose a return route which would bring me home some direction other than that towards which I had gone off. Of course, I always observed these precautions, since any neglect of them, if known, would have not only made me unwelcome to the brigands, but also gotten me into disfavor with the whole countryside.

When I reached the outlaws' camp I was careful to let them do most of the talking and to wait for the talk to come round to the subject of the beast-caravans. I had not long to wait, and, when I expressed my amazement and curiosity, they showed no reluctance about informing me. Bulla himself explained that Commodus had become so interested in beast-fighting, had developed such transcendent skill at fighting beasts and had grown so infatuated with the sport that he spent most of his time in the arena, displaying his dexterity to invited audiences composed of senators, nobles, notabilities and their wives and even children; in which exhibitions he had killed so many creatures that he had not only depleted but had almost exhausted the normal reserves constantly kept at Rome, Ostia and the other Tiber ports. When the procurators in charge of the supplies of beasts for the arena realized that the Emperor was killing his victims faster than they normally were brought in, even lavishly as they had always been provided, they sent out orders urging greatly increased efforts at hunting, capturing, caring for and rapidly transporting all sorts of creatures destined for the Colosseum. The Emperor's killing capacity and love of enjoying and exhibiting his knack so outran their measures that, by the time the increased supply began to come in, the royal sportsman's unerrancy and swiftness outran their best results, so that hasty messages had to be sent to Marseilles, Aquileia, Byzantium, Antioch and Alexandria ordering the instant despatch to Rome, with the utmost speed, regardless of expense, not only of all newly captured beasts as they came in, in contravention of the long-established regulations by which Rome and the provincial capitals shared each variety of animal, but also the concurrent despatch of the local reserves, even the emptying of the beast despositories attached to each amphitheatre. As the voyage from Aquileia to Rome was of variable duration, owing to the uncertainty and shiftiness of the winds, orders had been given to forward all its reserves and supplies, at once, overland. Hence the spectacle which had so excited the countryside and so amazed me. As Commodus was still slaughtering all sorts of beasts daily not only with arrows and spears, to show off his accuracy as a marksman but, even with sword or club, to display his incredible swiftness of movement and unerrancy in directing and timing a blow, he was taxing the capacities of his procurators and their gigantic organization of transports, teams, detention-pens, and hunters merely to stave off the apparently inevitable day when, whatever might run wild in the deserts, forests and mountains, there would be, at Rome, far too few beasts to maintain the autocrat's daily sport.

When I expressed my astonishment at the certainty with which these explanations were uttered and my wonder as to how they came to be so sure, Bulla said:

"Why, our King of the Highwaymen has reliable, capable and secret agents, entirely unsuspected, in every city of Italy. He has a brother and sister in Rome and equally devoted and unfailing helpers in Capua, Aquileia, Milan, Brundisium and Naples. He maintains a road service of swift couriers who bring him promptly all the information collected for him in the cities, where his backers catch every breeze of rumor and are forehanded in getting advance information on all important moves of the authorities as well as in sifting truth from falsehood. Equally prompt are his couriers in disseminating to subsidiary bands like mine whatever he judges we should learn; thus we know more of goings-on in Rome and at Court than do provincial nobles and highway-police."

As I trudged from the camp to my horse, as I trotted homewards, I was despondent. I had no right to be so, for I was merely one of the innumerable slaves held by the fiscus as the property of Caesar. As such I was notably well off. Even in my proper person I congratulated myself on my amazing luck. I was alive, unsuspected, secure, well-housed, well-clad, well-cared for, freer than many a freeman, than many a nobleman, pleasantly busy at occasional tasks very congenial to me and blest with much leisure among a companionable population in a lovely region full of diversified and charming scenery set off by an exhilarating climate; I should have been gay.

Yet my thoughts were those of a Roman nobleman. I was horrified at the state of the Republic. I knew that Italy had never been entirely free from outlaws. Even under Tiberius highwaymen had perpetrated successful robberies and had captured and held for ransom wealthy persons or even notabilities. But under most of the Emperors these outrages had been few and had occurred only in the wilder districts. During the civil wars between Otho and Vitellius brigandage had become rife all over Italy, even up to the gates of Rome, and Vespasian had had much ado to exterminate the outlaws. Again, under Nerva, bandits had multiplied and prospered. But none had ventured into any populous district during the principates of Trajan, Hadrian and their successors until after the death of Aurelius. Now, because of the negligence of his son, outlaws had so prospered that they had a sort of organization among themselves, like a commonwealth inside the Republic, as I had seen during my captivity with Maternus and now glimpsed again in Bulla's revelations. It argued a horrible disintegration of the governmental mechanism of the Republic and of the Roman character that such things had become possible.

Equally horrifying to me was the contemplation of Caesar's extravagance. I knew that the Republic's income from all sources was insufficient to keep up the court establishment and ceremonials at their normal cost; to defray the expenses of the state festivals with befitting magnificence of games in the circuses, amphitheatres and theatres; to maintain the Praetorian guards, city police, road constabulary and frontier garrisons. I knew that all these branches of the necessary structure of the state were constantly in want of more funds than could be supplied to them. I knew that this want of supplies crippled our commanders along the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine and the Wall, as well as far up the Nile and in the Euxine and made possible the insolence of the Ethiopians and Caledonians as well as the greater insolence of the Parthians, Goths and Germans.

Yet, when conditions so urgently called for greater expenditures along our frontiers and for close economy at home, I beheld our Prince stinting his commanders and their heroic legions and lavishing upon his own pleasure and the gratification of his amazing vanity sums which would have enabled our eagles not only to defy all assailants of our frontiers but to humble and subdue every threatening foe, even to penetrate and subjugate Nubia, Parthia and inner Germany. I sickened at the thought of our shame along the frontiers as at the thought of the energies of thousands upon thousands of hard-muscled, bold-hearted young men wasted on capturing beasts and the like energies of thousands upon thousands of hardy peasants who ought to have been busy at productive labor on farms or in forests or mines, wasted on caring for and transporting swarms of beasts for Commodus to kill.

Those thoughts were depressing. I could not banish them.

The next day the mood persisted. I had nothing to do, did not feel like doing anything in particular and yet felt restless. The weather was perfect. I set off afoot for a place not far from my cottage, not far enough to be called a long walk, where a big gray crag or small cliff like an inland promontory, a spur of a forested mountain, towered up from the southeastern side of the Flaminian Highway. At that point the road was the boundary of the Imperial estate; the crag lay outside it, and, at that part of its foot which projected farthest, was not a hundred yards from the highway. The mountain rose a thousand feet or more from the meadows along the road. The crag was full three hundred feet high. It was perfectly possible to toil up the steep wooded slope of the mountain and walk out on either of two bush-covered shelves which ran round the crag. From the lower of these, where it belted the front of the vertical cliff, there was a fine view down upon the highway and along it both ways; from the upper more of the highway could be seen; from the very top of the crag, which was bare except for two clumps of gnarled trees and starved bushes near its brow, the view included a full two miles of the highway in each direction.

I climbed the slope to the lower shelf and ensconced myself where I was shaded from the sun and had a clear view of the road both ways. From my coign I watched the traffic. I judged that the northern supply of arena- beasts was already overtaxed. The procession of wagons was no longer continuous. They came now in trains of a hundred or so with some miles between the convoys. Just as I settled myself no beast-wagons were in sight, the road-traffic was normal. An Imperial courier dashed into view from the south, tore past at full gallop, and vanished northwards; three family travelling carriages, also bound north, pulling to the side of the road to let him pass; as did a train of a score of mules laden with charcoal.

The first sign of arena-beasts which I saw after I settled myself to watch was a string of eight elephants, each with a turbaned mahout rocking on his back, and seven each with his trunk clasping the tail of the elephant before him. This was the second batch of elephants I had heard of; the former, I had been told, came by way of Ateste, since the elephants could swim the Po and all the other rivers had strong stone bridges. These looked well after their four hundred mile tramp and fit for the hundred and odd ahead of them.

Before they were out of sight there came into view the head of a column of wagons which turned out to be loaded with cages of bears, lynxes, bison, aurochs, elk, wolves and other northern animals. I watched them pass and meditated. After they were gone the road was normal for a full two hours, during which I pondered the thoughts which obsessed me and gloomed with shame over the condition of the Empire. I had brought food and water with me and ate about noon, slept an hour or more and woke to watch the passage of two trains of cages full of lions, tigers, leopards and panthers. The second train was overtaken and passed by two Imperial couriers from the north, racing each other, the former more than a half mile ahead of the latter, and, apparently lengthening his lead. I spent the day on the crag. Also I spent other days there, sometimes on one shelf, sometimes on the other, sometimes on the top.

Not many days elapsed before I again visited the outlaws' camp and had another chat with Bulla; not we two alone, for there was always an easy sociability about the bandits and, if none took part in or broke into their chief's talk, usually two or more lay or sat about listening and sharing our interview.

In the course of our talk Bulla discoursed of his importance, of the importance of the band, of the warm regard in which he and they were held by their head chief, the King of the Highwaymen.

Some quirk inside my head made me venturesome.

"What is his name?" I queried. "You never name him."

"His orders!" Bulla snapped. "I know his name; not another man of our band knows it. He never uses it and takes great pains to keep all outsiders who know his name from suspecting that he is King of the Highwaymen; and similarly to make sure that all outsiders who know him as King of the Highwaymen get no inkling of his name. If the knowledge got abroad the usefulness to him of his brother and sister in Rome would be destroyed."

I apologized for my question.

"No harm done," Bulla smiled. "I don't have to answer any questions unless I want to, and I don't mind questions from you."

"If you don't," I pursued, emboldened, "perhaps you'll be willing to explain how it can be that your king holds you and your band in such high esteem, whereas, to all appearances, you have not acquired a sesterce- worth of loot since long before I reached this neighborhood; in fact, as far as I can hear, have not succeeded in robbing anyone since you located your camp here?"

"I am perfectly willing to explain," laughed Bulla, looking more formidable when he smiled or laughed than when expressionless. "We are no cheap bandits to rob market-women, poor farmers, ordinary travellers or such small fry. We angle for bigger fish. We bide our time. We are here to make three big strokes and then a quick disappearance. Once we have our hands on our chosen prisoners to be held for ransom we shall be off for the mountain heights and the thickest forests; once we have the booty we hope for, those in charge of it will ride fast and far and get clear out of this part of Italy. Is that intelligible?"

"Entirely," said I, and was mute.

Bulla gazed at me almost genially.

"I don't in the least mind telling you," he said, "just what we are waiting for. Half the countryside knows and are alert to help us all they know how.

"In the first place we have word of a big consignment of gold on the way to Rome; ingots from the mines in the mountains of Noricum, nuggets and dust washed from the rivers of Dacia and Pannonia and Moesia. Of course it is in charge of a wary official and has a strong guard, but we have good hopes of getting it. If we do, it will be the biggest haul that any of our bands ever made, and that he has put me here to try for it is proof of my King's esteem for me.

"In the second place a wealthy senator, just the right man to capture and hold for ransom, is coming up from Rome in charge of a big chest of gold coin to be paid out by the administrators of Asia and Macedonia and Achaia. He himself is going out as propraetor of Asia. With him is a wealthy widow, going north to be married at Aquileia, and taking with her a big jewel-chest full of the finest and largest gems in the most magnificent settings. So we have in prospect three prisoners for ransom and three rich treasures.

"The difficulty is that it will be almost impossible to make both captures. If we nab the propraetor and widow, with the coin and gems, the rumor or report of it is almost certain to warn the procurator with the raw gold so that he will elude us. Similarly if we get him, news of our presence will most likely reach and alarm the propraetor and the widow. If one comes ten days or even five before the other we can scarcely hope for complete success. If fewer days intervene we might get both. I am here to get both. The King thinks me capable of the feat. His instructions are that, in case I judge that I can get but one, I am to try for the procurator and his gold, as it is estimated that his gold is worth at least twice the coin and gems together, even adding the possible ransoms of the widow and the propraetor.

"I am hoping they will come only a day apart or even the same day; all our couriers with letters about the progress of the gold convoy and the widow's preparations indicate that they will reach this part of the road at about the same time. They might meet each other right here where, we want them together. I keep nursing that hope.

"Now you know as much as you need to know about our plans."

I thanked him and marvelled at his frankness. But, as I rode home, I reflected that thinking me the Imperial slave I appeared, he thought me certain to be secret and, if possible, helpful.

I spent the next day and the next on my crag, watching the fascinating spectacle afforded by the highway.

On the third day the Villicus chided me for having told my name to the sub-procurator after I had recaged the panther.

"An Imperial courier has just passed," he said. "He is a close friend of a trusty friend of mine in Rome. Like most couriers he is obliging and will carry letters for his friends, even packets. He dropped here a note for me, warning me that I am likely to lose you. My friend is a crony of some of the upper slaves in the Palace and of others in the Beast Barracks.

"Your manumission, which was urged by the aldermen of Nuceria, has been favorably reported and may be ordered. On the other hand, the procurator in charge of the reserves of arena-beasts has heard of you and vows he must have you for service in or for the Colosseum. I am likely to lose you either way. I don't mind your manumission; I'll wager that I can induce you to stay on as you are. But I am all worked up over the prospect of a requisition for you from the Beast Barracks. If one comes it will be your fault."

I told him I was more stirred up about it than he was; that I should hate to leave him and loathed the very idea of being cooped up in Rome amid fetid cages; caring for lions and such like. We thoroughly understood each other, and he said:

"I'll have to manage to report you killed, if the requisition comes. I'm determined to keep you. I'll have to set my wits to work to arrange for it."

I hoped he might, but I felt nervous. I dreaded being dragged to Rome and recalled the prophecy of the Aemilian Sibyl. I had a feeling that to Rome I was going, my situation was too good to last. I thought of leaving Septima with much regret. Not that I loved her or even cared for her; but she was a girl no man could but respect and admire and wish well to. If I must leave her I resolved to leave her as well off as I could.

Making sure that I was far from any human being and unobserved I opened my amulet-bag, looked over the gems it contained, selected a medium-sized emerald of perfect color, sewed it into the hem of my tunic and sewed up the amulet-bag with the rest of the gems inside it.

At the first opportunity, I revisited the outlaws' camp, with the usual precautions, and found Bulla idle and genial. I told him I needed cash, all the cash I could get, and had an emerald I thought would be worth a noble store of gold and silver coin.

"Show it to me!" he commanded.

I took out my sheath-knife, ripped the emerald out of its hiding-place and passed it to him.

He conned it.

"You are right, brother," he said; "this is a fine gem. I tell you what I'll do. I'll ride, myself, to Sentinum and exchange this for cash, part gold and part silver. Sentinum seems an unlikely place in which to find a cash purchaser for a gem like this, but our King has a friend there who acts as his agent in several respects; among others he keeps cash in hand to exchange any time for precious loot; especially jewelry. He'll hand me the cash without hesitation.

"But if I am to do it for you, you must agree in advance to accept his valuation of the jewel and to divide with me, share and share alike, whatever he pays me for your emerald. In a case like this I charge half the proceeds of the sale as my commission for making the deal and as my fee for my time, risk and trouble. Do you agree?"

"Certainly," I said, "and I am amazed at your offer. How can you be away three days or more at this juncture? Might not your prizes: procurator, propraetor, widow, jewels, coin, and gold all slip through your hands during your absence in my behalf?"

"No fear, lad!" he laughed; "our advices never deceive us. The procurator with his gold is far away and approaching slowly; neither the widow nor the propraetor is ready to leave Rome; both are occupied with endless preparations. I have plenty of time. And it won't take me any three days to reach Sentinum and return. I'll set off at sunset. About the third hour tomorrow I'll be at Sentinum, my mount lathered and blown, but far from used up; about the ninth hour I'll pass out of one of the gates of Sentinum on my return, completely refreshed myself and with my mount fit for the return journey: I'll be here in camp at dawn day after tomorrow, with the coin bags. You can come for your cash any time after the third hour day after tomorrow. Is it a bargain?"

"Done!" said I.

"Then get home," he said. "If I'm to go two nights without sleep I'll give orders now, post my out-pickets and what not and snooze till dusk."

I spent the next day on my crag. Several trains of wagons with arena- beasts passed, but they were farther apart than ten days before. The other traffic on the road was normal.

Next day, not long after the third hour, I was in the outlaws' camp. Bulla I found awake and with no signs of drowsiness or fatigue. In full sight of all of his men he spread a blanket, and, on it placed four coin-bags, two small and two full size. From the larger he spilt their contents on the blanket and, each of us taking a bag, we picked up the silver one piece at a time, both keeping count together. There was an odd piece.

"It's yours, lad!" said Bulla. "I've enough here."

The gold pieces similarly spilled and counted, came out even.

"Are you satisfied?" Bulla queried.

"Both with the amount and the division," I replied, "and now I'll be off. You must need sleep."

"Sit still!" Bulla commanded.

He rose and went into his tent, for the outlaws had excellent hide tents. He returned with a fine new coin-belt of pigskin leather.

"Here," he said as he squatted down and handed it to me, "is a little gift from Bulla. Wear it next your skin. And remember to keep it flat and loose. Many a man has lost his life with his coin in a tight place because a bulging belt betrayed him to greedy ruffians. My lads will respect you, but you may encounter bandits who have no inkling that you are under my protection. Don't attempt to carry too much, of your coin about your waist."

I thanked him and tramped off.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE POINT OF VIEW

That evening, after our dinner, a perfect dinner eaten under a grape- arbor, lingering over the fruit and honey in the mingled light of waning dusk and a clear crescent moon, I showed Septima my belt and bags, put in the belt what silver would fill it to a flaccid and comfortable flatness, and gave her all the gold and the rest of the silver. I had already explained to her what impended over us, and had emphasized my wish to remain with her and my anxiety to know that she was provided for, if we were to be separated.

I did not visit the post of the road-constabulary as often as the camp of the outlaws. Next day I rode over to their post and chatted with one of the sergeants and several of the men. They were in doubt between, two opinions: most held that their presence in the district had frightened the bandits away and that they had left the neighborhood and transferred their attention to a wholly different region; only a few maintained the view that the brigands had been lurking near from before their arrival and that all their efforts had failed to locate their hiding place. I heard nothing which led me to believe that they had any inkling of the location of the outlaws' camp, of their purposes, or of their intended coup.

After a day of happy idling on my crag I visited Bulla. He was gay.

"It promises well," he volunteered. "The procurator and his gold are well on this side of Ariminum and the propraetor and widow left Rome yesterday. They'll he here within two days of each other, if he holds the rate he has kept all the way from Bononia and they travel as such luxurious folks generally do. Come over as often as you like. No one will suspect you or follow you. I'll keep you posted as to what our advices promise us. You may be able to help us."

By this time I was so interested in Bulla and his plans that I oscillated between my crag, the outlaws' camp and the constabulary post, with no more other occupations than what I judged absolutely needful to forestall any unwelcome interest in my doings and the possibility of too many persons knowing of my visits to the outlaws.

When next I visited them Bulla told me that something had alarmed the procurator. Either some rumor of their presence along the road had reached him or he knew of the bad reputation of the stretch of the Flaminian Highway through the Umbrian mountains between Forum Sempronii and Nuceria, which it had acquired some years before when the King of the Highwaymen himself had made on it a succession of valuable captures which had yielded him princely booty and the reports of which had spread all over Italy. Anyhow their advices informed them that he had packed his bullion-chests with stones and old-iron and had parcelled out his packets of dust and nuggets among the wagons of a long train of arena-beasts.

"We'll fool him!" Bulla boasted. "We'll nab him and hold him for a big ransom. Also we'll not only make sure of his bullion chests in case our information is false, or based on an intentional rumor he has given out as a blind; but we'll get that bullion, too, if it is not in the chests, but hidden in the wagons in the guise of dusty packets of provender for the draft-cattle or of meat for the caged beasts. We'll get it!"

Prom his mention of the wagons we fell into talk of the increasing difficulty of getting fresh meat for the lions and other beasts, of the depletion of the flocks and herds along the roads from Aquileia, to Rome; and he told me that his advices reported that the whole country near the highways was already swept clean of all goats, sheep and cattle, except breeding stock, milch stock and their choicest young kept for breeding. The inhabitants could get no beef, mutton or goats' flesh for themselves; all had gone into the maws of hyenas, tigers, wolves and the rest; and the procurators were insisting on the farmers selling their kids, lambs, calves, ewes and cows-in-milk, any stock, even mules and horses; any animals fit to butcher for lion-food.

From this we came round to chatting of my talks with the teamsters and of my prospect from my crag. I had told Bulla of the crag long before, but he did not seem to have taken in the idea. Now he was delighted.

"If I'd paid attention to you soon enough," he said, "I'd have put in a day or two with you watching the show. It's too late now. Our prayed for chances are coming soon, and not far apart."

Next day he was gleeful.

"It's all going to work out like the end of a theater-play," he said. "The procurator and the propraetor and his charge are practically certain to come along tomorrow afternoon. I calculate that they will meet not far south of your crag. I've planned to post one ambush near the foot of your crag, just south of it, another at a judicious interval down the road nearer Rome. I'll have 'em between the two ambushes about the middle of the afternoon or between that and sunset. We'll nab all three ransom prizes at once and we'll lay our hands on the jewels, coin and gold almost at the same instant. I've arranged to lead the constables off on a false scent about noon and they'll be miles away up a lonely crossroad when we pull off our coup. We'll make our getaway, with the swag, hours before they can get wind of the occurrence and follow on our trail. We'll have a long start of them.

"You can watch the whole thing from your crag. This ideal weather is going to last many days yet. And the moon will be full two nights from now, so its light will help us two nights on our getaway. I envy you up on that crag watching the show, comfortable as a senator at a theater, aloft like Jupiter on Olympus in the Iliad."

Next day I made sure that the Villicus would not want me, had Septima put up for me an abundant supply of her inviting food and set off about the middle of the morning for my crag, on foot, of course. I climbed to the very top and ensconced myself under and among sheltering bushes so that I was certain that I could not be seen from the road in either direction, yet could view it both ways as far as the horizon, except just at the foot of the crag and where, in the distance, hilltops hid the hollows behind them. Close by me I placed my precious kidskin of much watered wine, I might say of water flavored with wine, so that it would keep cool in the thickest shade. The day was hot, clear and still and the rays of the sun fierce. The occasional slight breezes were very welcome.

The outlook was really magnificent; a broad prospect of rolling pasturage, hilly pasturage, and wooded mountains; the grass-lands and grassy hillsides diversified by scattered trees, clumps of trees and small groves; the lower levels of woodland broken by grassy glades; the brighter green of the forests of chestnut, beech, and oak merging imperceptibly into the darker green of the pine-forests; the score of farms in sight brilliant in the green landscapes like semi-jewels; all the wide prospect glowing under a deep blue sky, varied by a very few very white clouds, the intense sunlight beating down on everything. It was a perfect summer day.

I conned the road, on which I saw only the rear of a column of wagons convoying arena-beasts receding over the hilltops to southwards, and the normal traffic, horsemen or two-horse carriages or wagons far apart and few. I dozed.

I must have slept a full hour. I waked hot, but much refreshed, feeling lively and full of interest in what was to come. Just after I waked I saw the constabulary, the officers and about a third of the men on horseback, the rest afoot, come up the road from the direction of their post, which was south of the crag. The infantrymen, tramped their fastest and the mounted men kept pace with them. They were evidently off on their wild- goose chase. As they came into sight below me, after passing my perch, I watched them double-quick northwards and wheel to their right into the first crossroad. They were barely out of sight among the forested hills when I saw momentarily, on the Highway, fully four miles to northward, on a sunlit hilltop, what I took to be the first wagon of a train of teams drawing cages of arena-beasts. I watched the road in that direction. What I saw confirmed my conjecture. Soon the road to northward was filled from its farthest visible hilltop to just below my crag with wagon-teams such as I had many times watched transporting cages of lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and the like. I made out also some cages which I was certain contained hyenas.

Every little while I glanced the other way. Just as the first wagons of the long train vanished from my sight into that section of the road immediately below me where my crag hid it from my view, I saw appear on a hilltop to southwards what I made sure was the travelling carriage of a wealthy noble. I conjectured that it had inside of it the ransomable propraetor. I kept my eyes on the road in that direction, only glancing northward from time to time. One such glance caught a glimpse of a travelling carriage among the beast-wagons; probably the procurator in charge of the bullion.

After I had caught glimpses of it on several successive hilltops the propraetor's carriage was near enough, on one of them, for me to recognize it. Of course, I had known from childhood the travelling carriages of our senate and nobility. As everybody knows, each, has a certain unmistakable individuality. Our makers of travelling carriages never make two precisely alike, and, what is more, the tastes of different families are so different that patterns are very unlike. I recognized the carriage for that of Faltonius Bambilio.

Why he was going out as propraetor of Asia so long after his term as praetor was a puzzle to me. I accepted it as one of the countless eccentricities of Imperial administration under Commodus. The irregularities of the management of the provinces ruled in the name of Caesar by prefects and procurators had notoriously extended to the provinces ruled by proconsuls and propraetors in the name of the senate. I had always disliked, despised and even hated Bambilio for his pomposity, self-esteem and bad manners. I rejoiced at the opportunity to look on at his capture.

It was by this time past the middle of the afternoon, the day still surpassingly fair and lovely, with few clouds in the sky, a steady light breeze, the mellow afternoon sunlight bathing the world and the sun already visibly declining towards the western horizon.

While I was grinning at my thoughts and watching the advance of Bambilio's carriage, glancing back at intervals at the beast-train and the procurator's coach, I caught sight, on the highway behind Bambilio's carriage, of another travelling carriage of which I had descried no glimpse before, though I must have missed seeing it as it topped several hills further south. When I caught sight of it, it was near enough for me to recognize it at first view.

Vedia's travelling coach!

Between the first and second beat of my thumping heart, I went through an amazing variety of complex, shifting and lucid thinking. And my thinking, multifold and effective as it was, was but as a chip on the surface of a freshet in a mountain gorge amid the torrent of emotions which inundated me.

Since I had begun to mend as the result of the succour and medication of old Chryseros Philargyrus I had resolutely refrained from, thinking of Vedia. I had argued with myself that it was impossible for me to forget or ignore the daily and hourly contrasts between my former status as a wealthy nobleman and my present condition as a fugitive always in danger and generally in acute discomfort. Amid the inevitable resultant depression I might keep alive, healthy and sane if I concentrated my thoughts on self-congratulation at my survival. If I dwelt on my downfall I should lose my wits. If, in addition to thoughts of my loss of rank, wealth, friends and ease I yielded to my inclination to brood over my loss of Vedia, I should infallibly go insane. I resolutely put thoughts of her away. I succeeded in keeping them away. During my winter at the hut in the mountains, during my succeeding adventures, I had not thought of Vedia; thoughts of her had crossed my mind but seldom and fleetingly.

Now, all at once, I was overwhelmed by the realization of how ardently, how unalterably I loved her, how keenly I longed for her, how tenderly I felt towards her. Nothing, past, present or future, mattered to me except Vedia and her welfare. I had been thinking with relished amusement of the dismay of some pampered beauty haled from, her luxurious coach and off through the wild mountains, immured in some lonely cave in the forests, guarded by coarse ruffians, reduced to the most primitive diet and bedding, forced to endure all sorts of discomforts, and threatened with death or worse if an enormous ransom were not forthcoming promptly. I had been chuckling at the prospect of getting a far-off glimpse of the first act of this comedy.

My revulsion of feeling was dazing. I was hot and cold with horror at the thought of Vedia's agony, terror and misery and of her danger among Bulla's swarthy, brutal ruffians with their black curly hair and beards intensifying the villainy of their lowering faces, with their mighty hands always close to their daggers. Vedia I must save!

How?

Almost as I recognized her carriage, my eyes, instinctively sweeping my entire outlook, caught sight of Selinus feeding among a small herd of young mares on a hillside midway of the extensive pasture on the other side of the road just to north of my crag. I knew there was, a little to the north of the crag, on the same side of the road, a knoll from which that bit of hillside was plainly visible at no great distance. I had my plan worked out in all its details.

I drank all I could hold of my watered wine, left my cloak by the kidskin, tucked a small packet of food into my belt-wallet, and raced down, the steep slope of the mountainside to the north of the crag, leaping from rock to rock under the huge forest trees. I reached the gentler slopes near the highway and gained the top of the knoll. Selinus was in plain view, grazing among his brides, and by good luck, all were headed towards me. I stood on the summit of the knoll and waved my arms. Selinus caught sight of me and galloped joyously down the slope of the pasture towards me. When he was near I ran towards him down the slope of the knoll, being careful that he should not lose sight of me. My luck held and he and I approached the highway and each, other where there was a comfortable interval between the lion's cage on the wagon which had been passing when I topped the knoll and the leading yoke of the team tugging the wagon next behind. The wind, also, was towards me, so that Selinus did not smell the lions till he and I met in the highway and I had mounted him. Like a hunting dog bounding over a fallen tree Selinus had leapt the tall thorn hedge which bordered the highway to keep stock off it and in the meadow.

Once I was on his back we set off northward at full gallop, which almost at once quickened into a maddened run. He had shied violently as we passed the first cage and he winded the lion in it, but I stuck on him. Also I stuck on at each, less violent sideways lurch as we passed cage after cage: tiger, panther, leopard, hyenas or lion; all smelt equally terrifying to him, but he only ran faster and his terror went into speed ahead rather than into leaps aside.

When we reached the crossroad, up which the constabulary had turned, the procurator's carriage was still somewhere up the highway; I had not seen it since I left the top of the crag. The train of beast-wagons seemed endless.

Into the crossroad we turned and up it Selinus tore. I chuckled. No road- police, no matter how young, nimble and long-winded, could maintain a double-quick any distance on that up-slope. Selinus mounted the hills like a grayhound after a hare. We were sure to overtake the detachment soon. They could not have gone far.

Overtake them we did and the maddened run at which Selinus scaled those steep hills caught their officer's attention. I had rehearsed what I meant to say and wasted no words. What I said conveyed the whole situation to him.

"We are too few horsemen to overcome them," he said, "but we can scare them from their booty and maybe from their captives. We'll ride our fastest and we have time to reach them before they are thinking of flight. The complete surprise will save the jewels, coin and gold and most likely the lady and the officials.

"But you fellows must double-quick after us to support us in case they recover from their amazement, rally and round on us from some near vantage-ground. You can retrace your steps in a tenth of the time it took us to reach here. Race!

"And you, Felix, give me that racer of yours. Fall in with the men. Here Caius, give Felix your saddle and bridle. Your mare is giving out. Felix, saddle and bridle your horse for me. Caius, take my horse."

In a moment I was afoot among the infantry constables, the officer was in the saddle on Selinus, the reins in his hands, and the horsemen were off at a tearing gallop, with us footmen after them at a run which carried us almost by leaps down the steep slope.

When we reached the highway neither the mounted police nor any outlaws were anywhere in sight. But it was plain that more time than I had realized had elapsed since I vaulted on Selinus. Not only was the sun near the horizon, but the bandits had evidently been further up the road than this. For an instant I marvelled that they had come this far at all when both their ambushes were south of the crag. Then I realized that they had been searching the wagons for the bullion. Every wagon was stalled, half were overset, the tongue-yoke of each was hamstrung, every cage was empty, not a lion, tiger or leopard, panther or hyena to be seen; all, apparently, let out that their cages might be ransacked. I conjectured that letting them out had taken less time than it would have taken to kill them.

Panting, sweating, nearing exhaustion, we hastened along the highway at a jolting run not much faster than the quick walk of untired men, but our best speed. We passed scores of stalled wagons, every cage empty, two hamstrung oxen or mules or even horses lying in agony before each wagon, the rest of the cattle either loosed and gone or held fast by the stalled wagons behind them. We saw not one teamster, not one beast. The long series of stalled wagons, with their hamstrung or stalled cattle and empty cages extended to the foot of the crag and beyond it. Beyond it we came on the procurator's carriage, empty; no horse to it or by it. Still we had seen no human being.

A half-mile further, midway of a flat stretch of road, on one side of which was an expanse of swampy ground, varied with pools bordered by sedge, reeds and bushes, with areas of tussocks and with clumps of willows and alders, we came on Bambilio's and Vedia's carriages, their gilded decorative carvings, coral-red panel-bars, pearl-shell panel-panes, gilded rosette-bosses, silver-plated hubs and gilded spokes and fellies glittering in the late sunshine.

His coach was without any sign of a horse near it, hers with all four hamstrung; their white leather harness, with its gold and silver bosses, horridly stained with the blood they had spattered all over them as they lay struggling and trying to kick. Both carriages were empty, their cushions and mattresses and other contents scattered about on the roadway.

The sun was near setting. Our sergeants, blown as their men and as I, paused and mopped their faces. We scanned the outlook. Far away well up the mountain side we caught sight of a group of burly men, and among them a slender figure clad in a garb of pale lavender hue with the sheen of silk. Below and close a similar group among which were two figures conspicuous for crimson cloaks or the like. Far below and much nearer us we glimpsed the pursuing horsemen.

Off we set, and our fresh excitement seemed to put fresh vigor into all of us. We ran a full mile straight across pastures and wooded hills towards the point where I had glimpsed Vedia.

The sun set.

The constables ran on, panting, but by no means failing.

I gave out.

The hopelessness of such pursuit took all the heart out of me.

I stopped.

I could not hope to keep up with the excited police. I could not believe that they would give any effective support to their mounted comrades or even that they could overtake the outlaws after sunset in such broken and wooded country, or that any or all of them could rescue any of the prisoners I shuddered to think of Vedia in the clutches of such ruthless villains. But I could accomplish nothing towards helping her. I turned to slink homewards.

Half way to the spot where we had left the highway I encountered a lion. He did not attack me or menace me and I was not afraid of him. But the sight of him brought to my attention that the light was waning and that I was, for a man afoot, a considerable distance from my cottage in broken country full of escaped beasts of prey. I had never understood my power over all animals, but I had always conceived that it depended on the way I looked to them when they gazed at me. I was totally unafraid of the most ferocious beast by daylight, but by no means comfortable in twilight or dusk, while after dark I had no reason to think that a lion, or tiger would prove more tractable to me than to any other man. I felt that I must hasten home, if I was ever to reach it alive. With what breath I had left I ran the rest of the easy downhill path to the highway.

When I reached it twilight had not yet deepened into dusk and I could see fairly well. The four hamstrung horses were struggling pitifully to rise and screaming at intervals. With my sheathknife I put them out of their misery; as also the four pack-mules which lay, similarly hamstrung, in the roadway, behind the carriage.

In spite of my dread of carnivora after dark I examined the coach and what lay about it on the road. There were two kidskins, bulging roundly, presumably with wine. Three covered food hampers, unopened; and, intact, a beautiful little inlaid chest, such as ladies have for their combs, brushes, ointment-pots and similar toilet articles. From their condition I conjectured that the bandits had just commenced to rummage the coach when the unexpected approach of the mounted constables, whose small numbers they most likely did not realize, had scared them away.

Reluctant to be off and fearing to remain, I glanced about, irresolute. In a clump of willows and alders in the midst of the swampy tract I caught sight of a bit of color out of keeping with anything which naturally belonged there and suggesting a woman's garment. There was a dryshod way to that clump of trees and bushes. I threaded it towards what I had glimpsed. When I was hardly more than half way from the road to the clump I thought I heard a sob. I made haste.

Hearing the place I saw a young and slender and graceful woman dressed as a slave girl. Somehow the sight of her brought to my mind's-eye vivid recollections of my convalescent outings in Nemestronia's water-garden. She looked terrified and yet hesitating to flee from me, as if she feared the swamp. A step nearer I realized that Vedia's maid, a woman not unlike her in build, as faithful to her as Agathemer was to me and amazingly astute, had had the shrewdness and also the time to fool the brigands by exchanging clothes with her mistress in the carriage.

"Vedia!" I exclaimed. "Caia!"

"Castor!" she screamed. "You know me? You call me Caia? Are you a ghost? Are you alive? And that voice! Oh, are you real?"

"Real and alive," I answered. "I am myself. I am Hedulio."

To my amazement there, in the dusk under the willows, among the alders, she gave a half-smothered shriek and the next instant her arms were round my neck and mine round her, and she was sobbing on my shoulder, repeating:

"Call me Caia again. This is too good to be true."



CHAPTER XXVIII

MOONLIGHT

When our transports had abated a little I was aware that the twilight was deepening into dusk and that I must somehow save Vedia from the roaming wild beasts. I guided her along the twisting track from her hiding-place to the road. As we gained it I heard a loud snarl of a lion or tiger or panther far off towards the crag. We must make haste.

I reflected that it would be a very strong and enterprising beast, even if a lion, which would break into Vedia's coach when its panels were slid and fastened.

"We are too far from any habitation," I said, "for us to reach any while the light holds. I dare not make the attempt with you among all these freed wild beasts. I should be afraid to try it alone in this deepening dusk. The best thing we can do is to get inside your carriage, slide the panels and trust to them to keep out any inquisitive leopard or lion. With the carcasses of four well-fed horses and as many mules laid ready to eat, no tiger ought to be hungry enough to be eager after us."

"I had thought that, too," she agreed.

I peered through the open door into the coach, which was roomy. Then I replaced in it its mattresses and cushions, Vedia showing me how they fitted and, going round to the other door and opening it, helping me to lay smooth the unmanageable feather-stuffed upper-cushions. She also showed me the receptacles for her toilet-box, the food hampers and the kidskins. While we were thus busied the almost full moon rose clear and bright over a distant mountain. I helped Vedia into the coach and she disposed herself at full length on its cushions, sinking into the feathers. I walked round the coach and slid all the panels except the front panel through which the moonlight entered, then I climbed inside, shut and fastened the door, shut the panels, fastened each and stretched out by Vedia, like her with plenty of cushions and pillows under my head and shoulders.

As I fastened the last panels we heard the hunting-squall of a leopard at no great distance. Vedia clung to me, shuddering.

"You have saved me, Caius," she said. "As you did on the terrace at Nemestronia's."

Naturally, for a while, we exchanged kisses and caresses without any intermingled words.

When, she spoke she said:

"How do you come to be alive?"

"That," I said, "is thanks to Agathemer and is a long tale. I am faint with hunger and thirst, you yourself should be in need of nourishment and might be the better for it. There should be food in those hampers and wine in the kidskins."

"There is," she said, "and plenty. I am as hungry and thirsty as you, now I am no longer terrified and am recovering from my panic. But I am intensely eager to hear your story. Do begin at the beginning just as soon as you can, and tell it while we eat."

Then she showed me how to dispose the hampers as they were designed to be arranged while the occupants of the coach ate. They were very generously filled with the most luxurious fare: hard-boiled eggs, ham, cold roast pork, sliced thin; breast of roast goose, breast of roast duck, young guinea-fowls, broiled whole and cut up, broiled chickens, broiled squabs; half a. dozen kinds of bread, a quarter loaf and different sorts of rolls; lettuce and radishes; bottles of oil, vinegar, garum sauce, and other sauces; salt smoked fish; figs, both big green figs and small purple figs; a jar of strained honey, several kinds of cakes, and plenty of salt, pepper, other relishes, and a lavish provision of knives and of silver, plates, spoons, cups and other utensils.

"Why all this profusion?" I queried. "You have enough here for a party of ten."

"I always have a variety like this," she explained. "I generally have very little appetite on a journey so I tell Lydia to put in all the things she can get which she knows I like. Then something is likely to tempt me."

We feasted by moonlight, while I told my story from the moment when I had received her warning letter.

"I knew that you mounted the horse in front of Plosurnia's Tavern," she said, "but I have never heard of you after that. Tanno and I did all we could to find out what had become of you; all we could without risking the secret service getting an inkling that we had a hope that you were not dead.

"In fact it was not only advertised from the Palace in due course, but circumstantially reported to us privately, that the secret service had learned that you had arranged for a fishing-vessel to take you to sea from Sipontum. They had then set three detachments of Praetorians to intercept you, one on each road, with watchers to warn them if you were recognized. You were seen or betrayed somewhere between Hadria and Auximum, one account said at Ortona, and the Praetorians killed you.

"Tanno said that the secret service always gave out such an account if they failed to locate and capture any man they should have arrested. But the confirmation of the story by three different private agencies plainly destroyed his hopes that you might still be alive. I tried to keep on hoping, but, after a whole year, I stopped lying awake and sobbing in the dark; while I felt more grief for you than I ever felt for Satronius Patavinus and more truly widowed than when he died, I ceased to grieve and regained my interest in gaieties and suitors. Don't you think that was natural?"

"Very natural," I admitted and went on with my story.

The moon rose higher and its rays no longer struck on our faces, but, striking through the open panel, diffused from what part of the cushion or sides of the coach they fell on directly, lit up the whole interior with a pearly glimmer. By this subdued light Vedia looked bewitchingly charming and coquettish, all the more because of the contrast between her elaborate coiffure and the simple costume her maid had worn.

I ate liberally and with relish and she appeared to enjoy her food as I did.

"You don't seem a bit worried," I remarked, "over the loss of your jewels."

"Loss!" she exclaimed. "I haven't lost them, they are all in the secret compartment under us inside the coach body, just where Lydia put them before we left Rome. The bandits had barely begun to ransack the coach when we heard the yells of the constabulary and then the hoof-beats of their horses. They and their horses made so much noise that the brigands thought they had to do with a hundred or more and fled, dragging off Bambilio and Lydia and leaving me and the hampers, even the wine-skins. They never were near laying hands on those jewels. They had Bambilio's coin-chests, to be sure; but not my jewelry nor so much as a nugget of the bullion they had expected. They were preparing to torture the procurator to make him reveal the hiding place of his bullion, when the yelling and galloping horsemen scared them away."

I congratulated her and we ate with even more relish. Both of us, however, were sparing of the wine, though I gloated at the savor of the first really good wine I had tasted for more than two years.

And garum sauce! I had not realized how I had craved such luxuries as garum.

I told my story to an accompaniment of Vedia's exclamations. She was amazed at all of it; at our crawl through the drain, at the loyalty of old Chryseros, at my involvement with Maternus, at my encounter with Pescennius Niger, at my involvement with the mutineers; but most of all, at my having been present in the great circus, an eyewitness of the most spectacular day of racing Commodus ever exhibited under his transparent pseudonym of Palus and his last day of public jockeying; and, equally, at Agathemer's device by which we survived the massacre.

We had finished our leisurely meal and I had finished my story, neither our appetites nor the flow of my narrative marred by the distant squalls of leopards and roars of lions, nor by the uncanny sounds made by the hyenas, when, all of a sudden, a lion uttered a powerful and prolonged roar within a dozen yards of us. Vedia shrieked and clung to me, clutching me so I had to remonstrate with her in order to be able to slide shut and fasten the open front panel. I had barely fastened it when another roar as loud, sudden, and long answered the first from the other side of us, somewhere in the swamp tract. This time Vedia did not shriek, she only clung closer to me. I held her as close as she held me and, so clinging to each other, in the pale glimmer of the moonlight striking on the shell panes in the panels, we listened to repetitions of the roars, each time nearer, till the two beasts were roaring at each other not much more than its length from the carriage, apparently facing each other across the dead pole-horses. I expected a fight, but they ceased roaring, and, by the sounds they made, fell to gorging themselves on horse-meat.

When we had become used to their proximity, since, after a lapse of time which seemed like half an hour or more, they kept on crunching and rending without any roarings and without coming nearer the carriage, Vedia, her arms still about me, told me the story of her doings since my downfall. Most of it was taken up with social gaieties and with rejections of tolerated suitors.

Then she, shyly, told me of her liking for Orensius Pacullus, of Aquileia, and her promise to marry him. She explained at length why she had been called imperatively to Aquileia, why he felt bound to remain there and how it was that she had agreed to travel to Aquileia to be married there, instead of his returning to Rome, which would have been the most conventional arrangement.

While she was telling me this we heard not only the noise of the feeding of the two lions which were eating the dead horses, but heard also a third animal as noisily tearing at one of the dead mules behind the coach.

"I cannot believe," she said, "that I ever consented to marry anybody else, even when I was certain you were dead. But you know, Caius, it is natural to be married; and to live alone, as maid or widow, is not only lonesome and unnatural, but unfashionable and absurd.

"But, now that I know you are alive, I shall not care who thinks me ridiculous or who calls me silly; I shall feel lonely, but lonely merely because I cannot live with you. I shall jilt poor dear Pacullus, who is as good a man and as good a fellow as ever lived, and I shall stick to my widowhood until I die or Commodus joins the company of the gods and we can arrange for your full rehabilitation and the restoration of your estates and rank."

Just as she said this we distinctly heard clawing and snuffing against the panels behind our heads, opposite where the lions were feasting. Vedia did not shriek, she was too scared to make any sound: she merely clutched me closer.

Both lions roared in front of the coach; a tiger's rasping yarr answered from behind it and almost instantly there were noises alongside the coach indicating that a lion and tiger were at grips; growls, snarls, more growls and more snarls, each choked off in the middle as it were, half swallowed and left unfinished. For some reason the noise of the fight immediately started a chorus of hyenas, emitting their strange cries, much like human laughter, but the laughter of maniacs. Our situation and environment was to the last degree uncanny.

The fight lasted no long time. We could not conjecture which combatant was victorious, but they dashed off, one pursuing the other. The remaining lion roared twice; long, choking, snarling torrents of thunderous noise; then it also went away. Except for distant snarls, squalls and roars, we were in a silent moonlit world, almost peaceful. I ventured to unfasten the other front panel and slide it a little way open. The rays of the high moon, poured in on our feet, we looked out on a magical prospect.

Vedia put a relishing warm arm round my neck.

"Call me Caia again," she whispered. "Where you are Caius I am Caia!" [Footnote: From the Roman marriage-ritual.] The implication thrilled me. It was as if we were married, had been man and wife for long past.

It may have been midnight, was near midnight when she said:

"I don't want to go to sleep at all. We can do without one night's sleep. We can sleep tomorrow night, when we are not together. Let's try to keep awake every minute till daylight."

In fact it was not easy to sleep, for a pack of hyenas, apparently as friendly with each other as if they had hunted together since they were weaned, came and picked the bones of the horses and mules, even ate the bones, which cracked loudly between their powerful jaws. The noise of their gluttony would have kept awake a pair sleepier than we.

But, when the moon was almost half way down the sky, when the roars and squalls and snarls of lions and leopards and tigers and the horrid laughter of hyenas had ceased to sound, when the night silence was so complete that we could hear the cocks crowing near distant farmsteads and the faint breezes rustling in the willows, we did sleep, she first, her arms round me and her head on my shoulder.

When we woke, with the slanted moon rays on the back corner of the coach behind me, she cuddled to me luxuriously, patted me and presently whispered, in a bantering, roguish tone which I detected even in her softest whisper:

"You remember that old sweetheart of yours?"

"I don't remember any sweetheart except you," I retorted. "I never had any sweetheart except you."

"I mean," she said, "that minx who made eyes at you and all your country neighbors and certainly tried to marry you and most of your Sabine friends."

"You mean Marcia?" said I.

"Ah," she said, playfully and teasingly, "I thought you would remember her name. If you remember her name you must remember her."

"Of course I remember Marcia," I said. "How could I forget her after the way she led my uncle by the nose, had half the countryside mad for her, set us all by the ears, rebuffed Ducconius Furfur, and married Marcus Martius?

"If I had never known her before I'd be bound to recall the creature who embroiled me with you. My! You were in a wax!"

"I certainly was," she whispered, "and I thought I had reason to be indignant. But now I believe your version of her relations with you and feel no qualms at recollecting the slanders I then credited. But, the point is, you remember her."

"My dear," I said, "if I had never set eyes on Marcia except when I encountered her in the Baths of Titus the day you rescued me from drowning when I fainted in the swimming pool, I'd remember her for life. She is too beautiful to forget."

"Am I so hideous?" she demanded.

"You are the loveliest woman alive," I vowed. "But Marcia is amazingly spectacular and the pictures she makes impress themselves on one's memory and eyesight. I could never forget her in that brilliant tableau on the camp-platform facing the mutineers, even if I had never seen her before."

"I was coming to that," Vedia said. "Marcia, who was a foundling and a slave as the adopted child of a slave, has risen so high that she is truly Empress in all but the official title. She has all the honors Faustina or Crispina ever had, except that she keeps out of those religious rites, participation in which is confined to women married with the full old-time ceremonies and observances."

I then told her what Agathemer and I had heard about Marcia while domiciled with Colgius, and of the absence from all talk about her of any mention of or allusion to Marcus Martius; I asked if she knew what had become of him or, indeed, anything about him.

"Oh, yes," she said, "all Roman society knew the main facts and dear old Tanno supplied me with many of the intimate details. Commodus made a point of having Martius specially presented to him because he had heard that he had been, with you and Tanno, one of the foremost fighters in your affrays in Vediamnum and near Villa Satronia. At his private audience he congratulated and bepraised Martius and acclaimed his prowess. Martius, who seems to have been a very fine fellow, disclaimed any pretensions to such laudations and modestly stated that he had, at the beginning of each fight, been far in the rear in your travelling-coach, with Marcia; that she had clung to him and so delayed his getting out; that each time he had gotten out and picked up the staff of a disabled combatant, but that, in each combat, he had arrived barely in time to land a few blows on some of the routed enemy; that in neither affray had he done any real fighting or been in any danger or performed any exploits.

"Commodus, in his blunt way, had asked whether he was good for anything, anyhow. Martius had replied that he was considered more than a mediocre horse-master.

"Commodus had then invited him to demonstrate his prowess in the Stadium of the Palace. There Martius had shown such skill, courage, agility, judgment, grace and ease that Commodus was delighted. He had Martius ride a number of wild, fierce and unmanageable horses and was more and more charmed with him.

"Next day he had another batch of intractable mounts for him. As Martius was manoeuvring one which he had almost subdued Commodus stepped too near the plunging brute and, in saving the Emperor from being run down and trampled, Martius was somehow thrown and his neck broken.

"Commodus was very penitent, felt that he had caused Martius' death, had him given a funeral of Imperial magnificence and, as soon as her grief had quieted enough, paid Marcia a ceremonial visit of condolence, as if she had been the widow of a full general killed in battle on the frontier.

"One sight of Marcia was enough. Within a very short space of time her wiles had ensnared him and Crispina raged in vain."

Then she told me all the story of the intrigues by which Marcia poisoned the Emperor's mind against the Empress, until Crispina fell under all sorts of suspicion in the eyes of Commodus: of how at the same time Marcia subtly laid snares for Crispina and enticed her into injudicious behavior with several gallants, until finally the Emperor put her under surveillance, later relegated her to Capri, then to some more distant island, and finally had her brought back to Rome, publicly tried, convicted and executed.

I told her my conjectures as to the queer outcome of the arrest of Ducconius Furfur and as to who Palus really was and who occupied the throne while Palus exhibited himself as wrestler, boxer, charioteer and what not.

"I know nothing to confirm your surmises," she said, "but we about the Court have often been puzzled at the way Commodus appeared to be in two places at once. You set me thinking."

After the second cockcrow, since dawn was not now far away, we fell to talking of the future.

"I shan't marry anybody, ever, except you, dear!" she promised, without my asking it and again and again: "I'll remain a widow until I die unless we outlive Commodus, and Tanno and I succeed in having you rehabilitated. I have many consolations in my wealth and social position and friends."

"And suitors," I put in, mimicking her tone when she bantered me about Marcia.

"And suitors!" she replied. "Caius, I love you, and I'll never marry anyone else, but I do love attention. I love to keep a dozen good catches dangling about me; their wooings and their gifts and their behavior generally are no end of good fun. And it's good fun to have half the marriageable belles furious with me. I cannot help encouraging any man, or even lad, who moons about after me. But you have never had any reason to be jealous, you have none now, you never will have."

I expressed my faith in her the best I could.

"You are a dear, dear boy," she said, "and it is good of you not to be jealous, even when you have so little reason to be jealous. I have much more. Suppose I raged about Nebris or Septima?"

I tried to change the subject and succeeded, when I suggested that we must plan what we were to do at dawn and in the future. After a full discussion and the airing of her ideas and mine, we agreed that there was little or no likelihood of the road-constables returning or of anyone else approaching her carriage before full daylight. As soon as there was sufficient light for it to be safe, I would open the panels enough for us to keep watch up and down the highway and in the direction the constables had taken. When we saw them returning I was to wait till they were near enough to assure her safety and then, at the last moment, I was to slip out on the other side of the coach. That was next the swamp and I could be out of sight among the willows and alders when less than two score yards from the road; also I knew the path across the swamp and could cross it and go off home through the meadows and pastures beyond it. This was our plan.

She said she would, whenever the road-constables returned, behave as if she had been alone in the coach all night. She had no doubt that the police would give her every assistance in their power.

"Of course," she said, "my intendant galloped off somewhere, somehow and the coachman and outrider and mule-drivers ran away; you couldn't expect any or all of them to make a stand against all those armed brigands. If the constables return, as they will, all my men will come back. Osdarus will manage to get me horses from the nearest change-station or somewhere else, somehow. Once at an inn I can get fresh horses. I can buy a team at Nuceria."

"Can you pay for a team?" I interrupted. "Have you the cash?"

"My gold and silver," she laughed, "are in the other secret compartment. The outlaws did not get my coin any more than my jewelry. Why look! Lydia's earrings are in my ears now and her necklace round my neck and her bracelets on my wrists and her rings on my fingers. The rascals were so sure of not being interfered with and so much at ease that they were startled frantic by the galloping horsemen and scuttled off with Bambilio's coin-chest, dragging him and poor Lydia and totally forgetting me, thinking me the maid, not even noticing these little trinkets, which are mostly silver and some of gold and so worth stealing.

"I have the cash to pay for two teams or three: I brought plenty for the journey to Aquileia, because we could learn little of the state of the roads beyond Bononia and I thought I might have to travel by Placentia or even by Milan. I'll get back to Rome, as fast as I can. I don't want to be married now, so I don't want to go on to Bononia, let alone all the way to Aquileia. If I did want to go on, the bandits have run off with my maid, and I could hardly get along without her, and they have also removed my escort, and I certainly could not keep on without a proper escort. I have every excuse for turning about at once and making haste to get out of this dangerous neighborhood and getting back home.

"Poor Lydia! I hate to think of her at the mercy of those brutal ruffians. They may maltreat her horribly if they discover that they have the maid instead of the mistress, and by the maid's device. I'll tell everybody I see that I'll pay any ransom in reason, even beyond reason, for poor Lydia, if the brigands will restore her to me safe and sound. I fancy their friends hereabouts, and almost every inhabitant of the district is a friend of theirs, by your account, will speedily have conveyed to them the news that their capture is worth almost as much ransom as they hoped to extort for me. That news ought to protect Lydia while she is among the outlaws and ought to help me to get her back without much delay.

"As soon as I am in Rome I'll send a trusty agent up here to set on foot negotiations with the outlaws and to rescue Lydia by paying what they ask for her.

"And, the moment I reach Rome I'll set in motion all the forces I can control or enlist, and I can influence many men in high places, I'll have all I can influence working quietly and most unobtrusively for that official manumission, of yours. Once you are free you had best travel secretly and without haste to Bruttium. No folk are more secretive or more loyal than the herders and foresters of Bruttium. Not only your former slaves on your uncle's estate there, but all their neighbors will do as much to keep secret your presence among them, and shield you and to make you comfortable and happy as the Umbrians hereabouts have been doing to help and protect Bulla and his band and to shield them from the constabulary and authorities. In Bruttium you can lurk in safety as long as Commodus lives and it will even be safe for us two to exchange letters. In Bruttium it can be arranged that no secret-service agent or Imperial spy can ever get wind of your existence, let alone of your hiding-place. You can be free, in a way, housed comfortably, with no duties, able to pass your time as you please, and well cared for. Tanno and I will see that you are supplied with cash for the journey and for your needs after you reach your haven."

The cocks crowed vociferously at all the neighboring farmsteads and we could hear them plainly across the considerable distances from us to each. The moon hung low and the pale first light of day began to overcome the moonlight.

Vedia petted me and I petted her and she repeated her vows of unalterable fidelity to her pledge to marry no one else and to hope to marry me.

As dawn brightened the hyenas burst into a belated chorus and a lion roared far away. After that the beasts made no sounds which came to our ears.

Vedia insisted on my eating more of her delicacies and, I confess, I ate liberally and with relish. A night with almost no sleep and much excitement causes an unnatural hunger at dawn and the delicious rarities tempted me.

She explained, over and over, that I was to behave precisely as if we had not encountered each other and be sure not to mistake some secret-service agent for her emissary. The watchword was to be, in memory of that used at my escape from Rome, that whoever came from her or Tanno to me would ask:

"Can you direct me to the leopard-tamer who rode the horse with the blue saddle-cloth?"

I was to reply:

"The blue saddle-cloth was bordered with silver."

He was then to respond:

"I have silver for the leopard-tamer."

I was then to say:

"I am the leopard-tamer and I have a pouch for your silver."

After we had rehearsed the passwords till both were sure neither could forget or misplace a word, as the day was coming on, we kept a keen lookout through the partly opened panels. Before sunrise I saw the mounted constables approaching down the mountain trail, for there were several points on it where horsemen could be seen through the trees, even from where we were.

I unfastened the coach door next the swamp, we kissed each other again and again, and, as the horsemen came in sight away across the meadows where they emerged from the woods, we exchanged a last farewell kiss and I slipped out and across the swamp.



BOOK IV

DISSIMULATIONS



CHAPTER XXIX

FELIX

From the marsh my path homewards led me past the villa, for it was directly between my cottage and the swamp. The very first human being I encountered was the Villicus himself.

"Hullo, Felix," he said. "I've been looking for you. We need you. Septima says she hasn't seen you since early yesterday. Where have you been all night?"

"Up a tree," I replied. "Bulla told me day before yesterday that he and his lads planned a spectacular capture and robbery on the highway south of Diana's Crag for yesterday afternoon. Most of the days lately on which you haven't wanted me I have spent on top of the crag, watching the traffic on the road. I went up there about the third hour yesterday morning, to view the show Bulla had promised me. I expected to enjoy it, but, somehow, when I saw the victims' coaches come in sight, the idea of a Roman lady in the clutches of Bulla's gang went against my gorge. I ran down alongside the crag towards where Selinus was grazing in the roadside pasture. He came to me and I galloped up the highway and up the first crossroad to warn the constabulary, who had gone up that road about noon, on some false information given them by someone at Bulla's suggestion. Their officer took my horse and I had to run with the infantrymen. My breath gave out and my legs too and I dropped behind when they left the highway south of the crag and struck off across country after the bandits, who had been scared off by the cavalrymen. It took me a long time to get my breath and rest my legs. When I felt able to walk it was after sunset. I can gentle any beast by daylight, but after dusk I'm no better off than any other man facing a lion or tiger. The brigands had opened scores of cages and the freed beasts began to roar and snarl soon after sunset. I climbed a maple and spent the night in a fork about six yards from the ground, where I felt safe as long as I could keep awake. I dreaded to fall if I dozed, and I was frightfully drowsy after such a hot day and such a long run. When the sun rose I started home."